Thursday, May 11, 2017

Boy, isn't this the week for doing the right thing for the wrong reason, though?

The LDS Church just announced that they will no longer be affiliating with the Boy Scouts of America for their 14-18-year-old boys (BSA is the de facto young men's program for most wards in the U.S.). Now, the LDS-run scouting program for this age of boy is a mess and has been for a long time, and I super-duper hate what a time- and resource-suck it is, and I hate the conflation of "Eagle Scout" and "righteous priesthood holder," and the end of the era in which our young men are conscripted into a program that they have little to no interest in can't come soon enough for me, but I would bet large sums of money that the only reason they're uncoupling at this point is because the BSA now allows gay scouts and leaders, and that's sheer bigoted rudeness. The BSA even said that church-run troops could still exclude gay members, so this just makes it look like the LDS Church didn't want to be even associated with a group that has been infiltrated by the "gay agenda," or some such nonsense.

And if they're going to get rid of it, why not ditch Cub Scouts too? They meet every week to do stuff they hate, and the pack meetings are just death, full of appropriative, faux-Native American language and ceremony and corny cheers that even the kids are embarrassed by and I HATE THEM. Why don't they have a twice-monthly program like the girls that age have, with the same budget (which is a whole other enraging discussion)?